The Nuclear Cluster of the Milky Way: Total Mass and Luminosity (long version)

TL;DR

This study characterizes the Milky Way's nuclear star cluster by analyzing its structure, luminosity, and mass distribution using star counts and dynamical modeling, providing new insights into its properties and composition.

Contribution

The paper presents detailed measurements of the nuclear star cluster's structure, luminosity, and mass profile, employing extensive proper motion and radial velocity data with advanced modeling techniques.

Findings

Nuclear cluster half-light radius ~7 pc.

Cluster mass within 100" ~6.09 million solar masses.

Mass-to-light ratio consistent with a Chabrier IMF.

Abstract

Like many other late-type galaxies, the Milky Way contains a nuclear star cluster. In this work we obtain the basic properties of its dominant old stellar population. Firstly, we derive its structural properties by constructing a stellar surface density map of the central 1000" using extinction corrected star counts from VISTA, WFC3/IR and VLT/NACO data. We can describe the profile with a two-component model. The inner, slightly flattened (q=0.80+/-0.04) component is the nuclear cluster, while the outer component corresponds to the stellar component of the circumnuclear zone. We measure for the nuclear cluster a half-light radius of 178+/-51"~7+/-2 pc and a luminosity of M_Ks=-16.0+/-0.5. Secondly, we enlarge the range over which detailed dynamics are available from 1 pc to 4 pc. We obtain more than 10000 individual proper motions from NACO data, and more than 2500 radial velocities from VLT/SINFONI data. We determine the cluster mass by means of isotropic spherical Jeans modeling. We fix the distance to the Galactic Center and the mass of the supermassive black hole. We model the cluster either with a constant mass to light ratio or with a power law mass model. For the latter we obtain a slope of delta_M=1.18+/-0.06. Assuming spherical symmetry, we get a nuclear cluster mass within 100" of M_100"=6.09+/- 0.53_(fix_R_0) +/- 0.97_(R_0) * 10^6 M_sun for both modeling approaches. A model which includes the observed flattening gives a 47% larger mass, see Chatzopoulos et al. 2015. Our results slightly favor a core over a cusp in the mass profile. By minimizing the number of unbound stars within 8" in our sample we obtain a distance estimate of R$_0=8.53^{+0.21}_{-0.15}$ kpc, where an a priori relation between R_0 and SMBH mass from stellar orbits is used. Combining our mass and flux we obtain M/L=0.51+/-0.12 M_sun/L_(sun Ks). This is roughly consistent with a Chabrier IMF.